RESIDENCIES & OPPORTUNITIES

The Artlink project The Winnowing Basket is an art trail presented in May 2025 within three parks and commons (Swan Park in Buncrana, Barrack Hill Park in Carndonagh, The Bath Green in Moville) across the Inishowen peninsula in County Donegal, Ireland.

Artlink invites artists to submit existing work or propose new work for selection, for the art trail/s across one or more of these parks/commons in May 2025. Any form of work or works may be proposed: from participatory, to performance, sculpture, image-based, time-based; and proposals will also be considered for the making of works in-situ on the art trails as an open studio/residency. The Winnowing Basket is essentially an art trail and so any proposal should be suitable for installation within that format. A selected artist may make new work, and/or explore the opportunity to adapt their existing work/s in this new context.

The art trail The Winnowing Basket should act as an encounter with diverse contexts, histories and media that relate artist’s practice to the site/s and as a discrete moment for art in situ to revision and reimagine these three parks or commons.

Proposals should be received by 15th December 2024.
Email proposals to sheehan68@gmail.com and info@artlink.ie with The Winnowing Basket in the subject line.

We are pleased to announce that Danielle Macleod has been awarded the 2024 Harry Kerr Bursary. Danielle is a gifted mask maker and photographer from the Isle of Lewis, whose work is deeply intertwined with the rich cultural heritage of the Hebrides. Her photography, captured on medium format film, is known for its evocative portrayal of traditional Hebridean life, local legends, and the mystical connection between people and their landscapes.

Having spent several years in Glasgow, where she earned a BA Honours degree from the Glasgow School of Art’s Communication Design department, Danielle’s work has continually sought to reconnect her with her island home. Through her lens, the landscapes of Lewis are transformed into otherworldly realms, and its inhabitants become guardians of ancient myths and stories. Her past works, including her solo show Guardians at the Island Darkroom and two person show Na Boireannaich with Alice Macmillan, at An Lanntair, Stornoway, have been celebrated for their ability to evoke a deep sense of place and identity.

Danielle’s winning project for the Harry Kerr Bursary will delve into the traditional healing medicines and practices of the Highlands and Islands. She will create a series of portraits and landscapes, focusing on the plants and materials once used in ancient healing rituals. By crafting wearable sculptures from these natural elements and photographing them within the landscapes from which they originate, Danielle aims to create a visual dialogue that highlights the profound connection between people and their environment.

This project promises to be a compelling exploration of folk medicine, and its enduring legacy in the Highlands and Islands, offering a new perspective on the deep interdependence between the land and its inhabitants.

The Harry Kerr Bursary has been made possible by generous donor contributions. Our goal is to raise €25,000 to fund five bursaries of €5,000 per year for the next five years, providing ongoing support to deserving artists. Together, we can honour Harry and continue his mission of fostering creativity, technical skill and artistic excellence in photography. To donate to the fund click the button which will take you to the Go Fund Me page.

Neva Elliott is a Dublin-based artist and writer with an MA from Central Saint Martin’s, London. She has exhibited throughout Ireland and internationally, including the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow, The National Gallery of Ireland, and The South African National Gallery. After a decade as CEO of Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s leading contemporary music group, Elliott returned to her art practice full-time in 2021.

Highlights from 2023 include her solo exhibition, How to create a fallstreak, at Linenhall Arts Centre, being an invited artist at the 193rd RHA Annual Exhibition and showing at ARTWORKS 2023 Remembering The Future at VISUAL Carlow, where she secured an award for ‘outstanding work’.

VISUAL Carlow also commissioned an excerpt from her memoir writing, which can be read at visualcarlow.ie/art-ideas. Other writing has been featured in literary journals, art and photography publications, and as exhibition texts, including Banshee, Unapologetic Magazine, Visual Artists Newsheet and Source Photographic Review, where it earned runner-up in Source’s New Writing Prize for 2023.

Elliott is an Irish Hospice Foundation signature artist.

Looking ahead, her solo exhibition, Notes on Being Human: A Year of Making, is scheduled for September
2024 at PALLAS Projects and Studios, Dublin and a two-person show at the Courthouse Gallery, Co. Clare, in 2025.

Neva Elliott creates work based on and in her life, not just narratively or anecdotally, but through extrapolating action from the awareness of the fragile and contingent nature of being human.

Projects come from a place of transparent vulnerability, saying the hard, uncomfortable things fundamental to being human. Individual works are formed through living as material, processing recollections and psychological states into action and tangible manifestation. Utilising herself as content and medium, a non- fictional performer in a lyrical conceptualism that blurs art and life.

Elliott’s recent body of work and solo show at the Linenhall Arts Centre in 2023 focused on grief centring on the artist’s loss of her husband, Colin, to cancer. Her forthcoming 2024 solo show at PALLAS will focus on post-traumatic healing and the ‘work’ everyone must do around difficult human emotions.

While on residency at Artlinks Fort Dunree, she will be working from biographical notes from the loss of her husband, whose family hails from Donegal. Creating work from and about her healing journey through lived experience – using her practice as a personal transformative process and vice versa. With works emerging as a product and communication from this experience, across textiles, ceramics, photography, text, performative action, voice, sculpture, and drawing.

While rooted in her personal biography, she aims to expand beyond individual memoir to speak to audiences honestly about aspects of our shared humanity that still hold some taboos – death, grief, and mental health.
“I use my practice to traverse the world, my relationships and the difficulties of being human. For me, it’s a means to work through grief, somewhere to place love for those who have gone, a way back to myself. It is a survival strategy baked into the act of making; an offering to my anguish and anxiety, a petition to ease it, a prayer in reverse.”

Image credit Devadeep Gupta

“As an artist navigating a multidimensional terrain, my creative exploration converges across installation, textiles, drawing, painting, film, publication, performance, and culinary arts. Rooted in collective experiences, my works serve as catalysts for dialogue, inviting reflections on contentious histories and their contemporary relevance.

My collaborative practice engages diverse communities, individuals, and institutions in India and Germany. Resulting in collective experiences shared through talks, lectures, performances, or workshops, my works aim to bridge perspectives. Through social engagements, urban and rural design interventions, expansive murals, lecture performances, and culinary sessions, I delve into narratives of resistance, disobedience, and marginalization. These narratives echo within contemporary society, serving as a lens to examine their impact on our collective existence.

This multidisciplinary journey seeks to unravel the intricate layers of human narratives, fostering connections and understanding amidst complexities, transitions, and adaptations in the face of adversity.”

The Whispering Sea

In the whispers of history and the echoes of my lineage, I find myself rooted in the narrative of migration that spans generations. Born and raised in the tranquil village of Bally, West Bengal, I am an heir to a legacy shaped by the turmoil of the Indian subcontinent’s partition in 1947. My family’s journey began in the bustling port city of Chittagong, where my grandparents, like countless others, embarked on a journey of survival and resilience.
The upheaval of partition compelled my ancestors to seek refuge, leaving behind the familiar shores of Chittagong for the uncertain embrace of Mumbai. Their tales, woven with threads of displacement and fortitude, have resonated through the passages of time, imprinting upon me a profound connection to the rhythms of migration and the cadence of the sea.

Growing up in Bally, the whispers of the Indian Ocean danced through the stories passed down by generations. The ocean, a witness to the collective memories and narratives of my family’s exodus, became an intrinsic part of myself—a silent witness to the legacy of movement and adaptation.

Now, in the context of this residency at Artlink, I yearn to forge an artistic dialogue between the Indian Ocean’s melodic history and the vast expanse of the Atlantic. This opportunity serves as a poetic juncture to weave the threads of my heritage with the broader tapestry of global migrations.

My artistic endeavour aims to illuminate the intricate parallels between the migration of waters and the human odyssey. It’s an exploration that transcends geographical boundaries, seeking to decipher whether the essence of migration resides solely within human vessels or if the oceans themselves, in their rhythmic tides and currents, carry echoes of movement and displacement.

Through the vessel of art, I endeavour to distil the essence of these migrations into tangible expressions that evoke emotions, provoke contemplation, and foster connections across oceans and histories.

Through various mediums encompassing murals, installation, multimedia and culinary practices, I aim to encapsulate the essence of migration, translating the intangible emotions into a tangible space of contemplation, courage, embracement and most importantly imagination.

In interacting with Artlink’s program, I intend to contribute actively to the local artistic community. Through open studio sessions, workshops, talks, and cooking sessions I aim to share my artistic journey and insights, fostering dialogues that intertwine the global narrative with the local tapestry.

This residency at Artlink stands as an intersection where my narrative converges with the grandeur of the oceans’ tales, and I am eager to embark on this immersive artistic journey—a testament to the resilience, love, adaptability, and endurance inherent in the human spirit amidst the currents of change, pain and hostility.